Life in KE Girls Hostel
By Naghmi Shirin


Getting admission in KE was a dream come true. We reached Lahore with high ambitions and great hope. The beauty and grandeur of the building of KEMC won our heart on first sight. The first disappointment was when we saw the girls’ hostel. It was a small building, hardly large enough to accommodate fifty or so girls altogether. [The new blocks were added after two years] Therefore, we were refused accommodation for first few months unless our senior classes moved on.
How we managed, is another story.

When we moved in the hostel, the first strange thing that came as a pleasant surprise was the word "doctor sahiba" by all the servants. All twelve girls of the first year were allotted a single dorm. The seniors had four seaters, biseaters and cubicles. Since it was a small hostel, at that, time so there was no tradition of much fooling and senior girls were very welcoming. All the fooling that we faced was in the college. As far as I recollect my roommates were, Raheela Ajmal from Gujranwala, Rubina Aslam from Sialkot, Nasreen from Gujrat, Shahida from Rawalpindi, Naheed Sheikh from Sargodha, Iffat Salim from PAF, and Fauzia Shaukat from Rahim Yar Khan, Farida Shafie from Malaysia, Afsanah from Iran and myself from Wah Cantt. I apologize if I have forgotten somebody’s name. The other students from outside Lahore like Seemein Rukh from Wah, Sofia Ismail from PAF, were staying with relatives.

Can you imagine how twelve people of different habits and backgrounds, when forced to live twenty-four hours together would manage? However, those were great times and we not only tolerated but enjoyed each other’s company [there being no other option]. Fauzia was quite particular in prayers; she used to call everybody ‘Chanda ji’ so ended up with being called Chanda ji herself. While most of us complemented ourselves if we managed at least three prayers a day. Some never bothered. Nevertheless, at that time no one was concerned with each other’s religious habits.

When we reached the room after classes, everybody had something to tell and the whole dorm kept laughing. Our dorm was also the common meeting ground of our day scholar friends .It was the place where most of the nicknames originated. [Amir Ali was Radius. Amir Qazi was Ulna there was one Hanger, Kamran Hussain was...,well…, so on so forth]

Our main difficulty was to get time for studies because every week there was a substage or some Physio test. Most of the girls chose rooftop or the gardens for some solitude. Girls’ hostel had some very beautiful gardens and I being used to the lovely garden of my house preferred that.

The other problem was to get proper sleep. Everybody had her own schedule. As a result, one or the other alarm clock was ringing all the time. It was in times like these that we realized, how our mothers took care of our needs, when they would not allow our younger siblings to even walk or talk loudly when we were asleep. I think hostel life really prepares us for the future, where for the first time one learns how to make one’s bed.

The food in the hostel was terrible. We learnt that boys’ hostel had many different mess halls and a variety of menus, but we had to survive with the same monotonous routine. Anarkali was nearby, so we could sometimes flatter our taste buds with burgers and chat but there were no home deliveries at that time. [Our children are lucky] So on weekends we sometimes tried our culinary skills, which were quite poor. There was a small kitchen provided for this purpose, mainly to make tea at odd times apart from the main mess kitchen. Chicken karahi was the easiest and the most popular even then. Hierarchy had to be maintained at all times. So we had to wait until our seniors were finished if they pleased to cook something. Sometimes our day scholar friends would invite us to their homes. I remember Mehr, Iffat, Zahra , Seema Naz and Maryam often invited me on one pretext or another. Thanks to their moms for their loving hospitality.

Preparation of exams in the hostel was an uphill task. But we had the advantage to do group studies. Many of the day scholars came to hostel for the preparation of exams. One of our sweet friends who was also our GR, had the habit of taking a night round at ten o clock and inform us in a very smug tone that she had finished her preparation and was about to go to sleep. We really panicked and started our serious study after her proclamation. First professional was the longest and toughest exam we ever had. Only after that, we realized that we are in a university and respectable citizens of this country.